Scientists may have identified the first specks of interstellar dust in material collected by the US space agency's Stardust spacecraft. A stream of this dust flows through space; the tiny particles are building blocks that go into making stars and planets. The Nasa spacecraft was primarily sent to catch dust streaming from Comet Wild 2 and return it to Earth for analysis. But scientists also set out to capture particles of interstellar dust. The material was gathered by the Stardust probe in a seven-year, 4.8-billion-km (2.9 billion miles) interplanetary voyage.

Astronomers have found the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies. Quasars are the extremely bright centers of galaxies surrounding super-massive black holes, and binary quasars are pairs of quasars bound together by gravity. Binary quasars, like other quasars, are thought to be the product of galaxy mergers. Until now, however, binary quasars have not been seen in galaxies that are unambiguously in the act of merging.

PARIS: Astronomers have made the first direct capture of a spectrum of light from a planet outside the Solar System and are deciphering its composition. The light was snared from a giant planet that orbits a bright young star called HR 8799 about 130 light-years from Earth, said the European Southern Observatory (ESO). “The spectrum of a planet is like a fingerprint. It provides key information about the chemical elements in the planet’s atmosphere,” said Markus Janson, lead author of a study on the find. “With this information, we can better understand how the planet formed and, in the future, we might even be able to find tell-tale signs of the presence of life.”

The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water. Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike. NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole. The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a two-part plume of material from the bottom of the crater.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2009) — For decades, climate scientists have worked to identify and measure key substances -- notably greenhouse gases and aerosol particles -- that affect Earth's climate. And they've been aided by ever more sophisticated computer models that make estimating the relative impact of each type of pollutant more reliable. Yet the complexity of nature -- and the models used to quantify it -- continues to serve up surprises. The most recent? Certain gases that cause warming are so closely linked with the production of aerosols that the emissions of one type of pollutant can indirectly affect the quantity of the other.

Finally, an optical frequency comb that visibly lives up to its name. Scientists at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States have built the first optical frequency comb—a tool for precisely measuring different frequencies of visible light—that actually looks like a comb.As described in the Oct. 30 issue of Science,* the "teeth" of the new frequency comb are separated enough that when viewed with a simple optical system—a grating and microscope—the human eye can see each of the approximately 50,000 teeth spanning the visible color spectrum from red to blue.